Says they should stop behaving like maharajahs

Nepal Communist Party (NCP) Co-chairperson Pushpa Kamal Dahal today said communists in Nepal were acting like the maharajahs of yesteryears and that people would vote them out if they didn’t mend their ways.

He said communists across the globe fought and sacrificed for people and won their hearts until they ascended to power. “Soon after attaining power, they forget the needs of the people and the nation,” he said at an interaction in the capital today.

Dahal said after attaining power the communists undermined their own sacrifices. He said the capitalists, who knew they could never defeat the communists, were smart enough to defeat the communists through their bourgeoisation. “Capitalists are so shrewd they do not even have to fire a bullet to topple a communist regime propped up by the sacrifice of crores of people,” he said.

He added that the US did not have to attack the Soviet Union to topple it. “Even communist regimes in east Europe were toppled without any war. When communists become maharajahs, the very people who fought against the erstwhile maharajahs also fight against the communists and throw them away,” he said. “I foresee similar fate of communists in Nepal.”

According to Dahal, the NCP has begun a debate to ensure that communists of Nepal are spared such a fate, especially at a time when the NCP had become a large party after unification and the people had shown faith in it.

Dahal also lamented growing indiscipline among communists in Nepal. He said communists in Nepal were making unnecessary remarks serving personal interest.

“Earlier, we used to talk about ‘collective decision, personal responsibility’, but today it has become ‘personal decision, collective responsibility’,” he said, adding that the NCP had a historic responsibility to address these shortcomings.

Meanwhile, Dahal and senior NCP leader Madhav Kumar Nepal today held a meeting at the former’s residence in Khumaltar, Lalitpur. The leaders talked about the party’s internal matters.

The meeting comes a day after a heated debate between Nepal and Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli before the latter’s departure for Singapore for treatment. At a separate programme, Nepal got defensive regarding yesterday’s altercation with Oli. He said it was not a serious issue and added that such ‘ideological debates’ happened in political parties.

A version of this article appears in print on August 24, 2019 of The Himalayan Times.